Official Blog of Author MICHAEL THOMAS BARRY.
A blog which discusses varied topics that are related to the authors many books. Michael is a columnist for CrimeMagazine.com and a reviewer for the New York Journal of Books.
Questions or comments can be sent to ocauthor6434@gmail.com

Wednesday, May 16, 2012

1st Academy Awards Ceremony is Held - 1929

On this day in 1929, the Academy of Motion Picture Arts
and Sciences hands out its first awards, at a dinner party for around 250
people held in the Blossom Room of the Roosevelt Hotel in Hollywood,
California. The brainchild of Louis B. Mayer, head of the powerful
MGM film studio, the Academy was organized in May 1927 as a non-profit
organization dedicated to the advancement and improvement of the film industry.
Its first president and the host of the May 1929 ceremony was the actor Douglas
Fairbanks, Sr. Unlike today, the winners of the first Oscars--as the coveted
gold-plated statuettes later became known--were announced before the awards
ceremony itself.

At the time of the first Oscar ceremony, sound had just been
introduced into film. The Warner Bros. movie The Jazz Singer--one of the
first "talkies"--was not allowed to compete for Best Picture because
the Academy decided it was unfair to let movies with sound compete with silent
films. The first official Best Picture winner (and the only silent film to win
Best Picture) was Wings, directed by William Wellman. The most expensive
movie of its time, with a budget of $2 million, the movie told the story of two
World War I pilots who fall for the same woman. Another film, F.W. Murnau's
epic Sunrise, was considered a dual winner for the best film of the
year. German actor Emil Jannings won the Best Actor honor for his roles in The
Last Command and The Way of All Flesh, while 22-year-old Janet
Gaynor was the only female winner. After receiving three out of the five Best
Actress nods, she won for all three roles, in Seventh Heaven, Street
Angel and Sunrise.

A special honorary award was presented to Charlie
Chaplin. Originally a nominee for Best Actor, Best Writer and Best Comedy
Director for The Circus, Chaplin was removed from these categories so he
could receive the special award, a change that some attributed to his
unpopularity in Hollywood. It was the last Oscar the Hollywood maverick would
receive until another honorary award in 1971. The Academy officially began using the nickname Oscar for
its awards in 1939; a popular but unconfirmed story about the source of the
name holds that Academy executive director Margaret Herrick remarked that the
statuette looked like her Uncle Oscar. Since 1942, the results of the secret
ballot voting have been announced during the live-broadcast Academy Awards
ceremony using the sealed-envelope system. The suspense--not to mention the
red-carpet arrival of nominees and other stars wearing their most beautiful or
outrageous evening wear--continues to draw international attention to the film
industry's biggest night of the year.